Summertime offers as much to watch as any other time of year. Here's our guide to the coming season's best and worst.

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No, you can't take the summer off.

While the seasonal viewing may not be quite as heavy as it is in the fall and “midseason,” summer TV has come a long way from ancient times, when it was 13 weeks of reruns and stand-in variety shows. And it has gotten a lot longer, as well.

With the traditional viewing seasons shrinking, summer now lasts almost half the year, from right about now until the major networks get around to unwrapping their fall schedule in mid-to-late September – for the math-challenged, that's nearly five months.

Here are some of the highlights and lowlights of the summer offerings, with the date the new season begins:

MORE SHOWS WE'RE GLAD TO HAVE BACK

“Dexter” Showtime, June 30 – The tale of the good-guy serial killer comes to an end after eight seasons. At the close of last season, Dexter's carefully constructed world was falling apart. Does Dexter's career end in disaster, or can he find some way to escape?

“Longmire” A& E, May 27 – Last summer's best new detective show. Wyoming county sheriff Walt Longmire lacks any of the extraordinary abilities of most TV crime fighters, so he must rely on determination and the help of his friends.

“The Killing” AMC, June 2 – The first two installments lurched from excellent to frustrating and back again. But when “The Killing” stays focused on characters and emotion and steers clear of needless plot twists, it is one of the best dramas going.

“Push Girls” Sundance, June 3 – A startlingly different reality series follows the lives of four paraplegic women from Los Angeles. It is far more honest than most allegedly documentary shows.

“Keeping Up with the Kardashians” E!, May 20 – Thanks to the sisters' inexplicable omnipresence, it's easy to keep up with the Kardashians without tuning in to this tediously self-indulgent show. So why bother?

“The Bachelorette” ABC, May 20 – Desiree Hartsock already is over the heartbreak of being jilted on “The Bachelor” and ready to do some rejecting of her own. Can she improve the show's 25 percent marriage rate? Probably not.

“Master Chef” Fox, May 22 – I'm ready for a break from Gordon Ramsay – a long break. And he can take Joe Bastianich, the most unpleasant person on television, with him.

“True Blood” HBO, June 14 – What little was once good about this show was bled out long ago. What's left are a bunch of monsters whose superpowers allow them to do whatever the script needs at the moment.

FIVE NEW SHOWS WE WANT TO TRY …

“Family Tree” HBO, Sunday – Christopher Guest, the genius behind the classic “mockumentary” films “This Is Spinal Tap,” “Best in Show,” “Waiting for Guffman” and others, brings his style to a TV series – along with this usual band of co-conspirators, including Michael McKean, Fred Willard and Catherine O'Hara.

“72 Hours” TNT, June 6 – There are three survivalist contests debuting this summer: this, “Get Out Alive with Bear Grylls” (NBC, July 8) and “The Hunt” (The CW, July 31). “72 Hours” looks like the most interesting of the set.

“Under the Dome” CBS, June 24 – A mysterious, invisible dome suddenly cuts off a small Maine town from the rest of the world in this science-fiction drama, based on a novel by Stephen King. We wish it were a miniseries, though.

“Ray Donovan” Showtime, June 30 – Liev Schreiber plays the title character, a “fixer” for Hollywood's rich and famous whose life is upended when his father (Jon Voight) unexpectedly is released from prison.

“The White Queen” Starz, August (date TBA) – England's War of the Roses from the point of view of three important women: Elizabeth Woodville (the queen of the title), Anne Neville and Margaret Beaufort. Adapted from “The Cousins' War,” a series of historical novels by Philippa Gregory, and co-produced by the BBC.

… AND FIVE WE'RE NOT SO SURE ABOUT

“The American Baking Competition” CBS, May 29 – This could be a fun show, but the previews strike us as all wrong. CBS seems like the wrong network for the show.

“Princesses: Long Island” Bravo, June 2 – This might have been called “The Pre-Housewives” instead. Six women ages 27-30 get the usual Bravo treatment. Like we need more of that.

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